‘Planets’ Articles at NetMassimo Blog, Page 13

Artistic concept of the planet Kepler-36c the way it would be seen from the surface of the planet Kepler-36b (Image Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David Aguilar)

The star Kepler-36 has two extraordinary planets with very close orbits

Massimo Luciani June 30, 2012 0

Thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, a team of astronomers from the Universities of Washington and Harvard discovered two really extraordinary planets orbiting the star Kepler-36. In fact they’re two planets completely dissimilar but with very close orbits.

The planet 55 Cancri e is the first super-Earth directly observed

Massimo Luciani May 9, 2012 2

For the first time the Spitzer Space Telescope detected the infrared light of a super-Earth. The planet observed is 55 Cancri e, already known in a more indirect way since 2004 by analyzing the changes of light from the star 55 Cancri when the planet passed in front of it.

The size of the debris disc observed around the star Fomalhaut compared to the size of the Kuiper Belt and Asteroid Belt in our Solar System (Image NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI))

The star Fomalhaut has a huge ring and maybe some planets

Massimo Luciani April 14, 2012 3

Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. According to new observations, it has to planets close to the dust ring already discovered several years ago.

The Viking 2 on Mars at Utopia Planitia in 1976 (Image JPL/NASA)

Maybe the Vikings really found life forms on Mars

Massimo Luciani April 13, 2012 1

In 1976, the Viking 1 and 2 landers carried out an experiment on Mars that aimed to test the possibility that there was life on the red planet. Some chemical reactions revealed were unexpected but they weren’t regarded as evidence of the existance of life forms. The issue remained controversial and now an international team of scientists who conducted new analysis on the data from that time concluded that probably there’s life on Mars.

Dust devil on Mars (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA)

Pictures of a new, gigantic, dust devil taken on Mars

Massimo Luciani April 7, 2012 1

On March 14 the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) discovered another dust devil really huge. Astronomers determined its height examining the photographs transmitted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and established that it’s about 20 km (about 12 miles) high with a column diameter of about 70 meters (about 75 yards). That’s the size of a large tornado on Earth!